Many female employees in the past have shared their plight of being fired during maternity leave. In March this year, several ex-Google employees gathered and sent an open letter to CEO Sundar Pichai, demanding better handling of the layoff situation and ‘respecting scheduled leaves’ like maternity leave, bereavement leave, etc. .
However, the company is constantly laying off people and in its most recent round, a woman lost her job barely 10 weeks after giving birth to her baby. The woman was a Google employee for more than 12 years and wrote in a LinkedIn post that she was ‘heartbroken and devastated’ after learning about this.
Google employee loses job on maternity leave
Writing about her layoff, the woman wrote, “After 12.5 years at Google, I unfortunately was impacted while on maternity leave by the Google recruiting layoffs that happened last Wednesday. I am heartbroken and devastated to say the least, especially while on leave with a -10-week-old. I will, however, be forever grateful for all of my time at Google, and for the amazing people I was able to work with, who I call my friends and more importantly, my family.”
The woman then wrote that she is currently having difficulty figuring out how to find a new job and how to appear for an interview. However, maintaining a positive mindset, she wrote that she is also ‘excited’ to see what happens next.
“I am having a hard time wrapping my head around what is next or how I am going to interview & work elsewhere at this moment, but I know that things will work out, and I am excited to see what is next. If you know of any Staffing Manager roles in any industry, or Program Manager roles, please keep me in mind. I would love to connect with anyone even if there is not a role at this time. The more connections, the merrier. Also if anyone is looking for IC recruiters for any and all industries, please reach out. My team was heavily impacted and they are incredible recruiters,” her LinkedIn post reads.
About Google layoffs
Google laid off hundreds of people from its recruiting team earlier this month. The tech giant’s parent company Alphabet announced its decision to lay off employees from its global recruiting team. The company also said that the decision to lay off “a few hundred” employees was not “part of a wide-scale layoff.” Alphabet also said it would “retain a significant majority of the team to fill key roles”. Additionally, the company also announced plans to help affected employees find other roles “within the company and elsewhere.”
Before removing people from the HR team, Google had announced its decision to lay off 12,000 people in January this year. A few months later, Google fired people in its Waze mapping app department as they began integrating the app into Google Maps products. Chris Phillips, head of Google’s Gio unit, informed employees about the layoff decision through an email.